


Defensive Posture

by Jintian



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-06-09
Updated: 1999-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jintian/pseuds/Jintian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when Scully gets a temporary assignment elsewhere?  Set during Season 6, post-"Fight the Future," pre-"Two Fathers/One Son."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defensive Posture

**Author's Note:**

> Beta thanks to Forte.

J. Edgar Hoover Building  
Friday, January 15, 1999  
11:23 am

There was one instructor at Quantico I hated, the only one who was a big enough bastard to earn it. His name was George Hauser, and he was a big, hulking, ape of an ex-Marine who taught my unarmed combat class. It was a women-only section, and Hauser's motto for us was, "You gotta learn the ways of the world, little ladies." Which he'd spit out right before he slammed one of us into the mat, gasping from the pain.

Most of the time, that person was me. He'd actually amend the Hauser slogan to, "...little Red," just for my enjoyment. And he'd grin in my face, hovering over me with one gold-lined tooth reflecting the gym lights. "Work on that defensive posture, little Red," he'd say once I was flat on my back. "That's the only way you'll stay on your feet."

I can't count how many nights I hobbled back to the dorms, refusing to put a hand to my spine in case one of my male classmates was watching. But I know I cursed Hauser at every step.

So when a special request came through from Quantico for me to teach a self-defense course, my first instinct was to call and ask, "Is Hauser still there?"

The reply was affirmative. And actually, the department's secretary muttered conspiratorially over the phone, that was the problem. His heavy-handed methods had finally provoked one too many complaints from the women recruits. Admin was re-evaluating his teaching methods at the same time they were pulling in more female instructors, a move engineered to cut down on female drop-outs. Since I didn't have any current cases in the field, my presence was requested as a substitute instructor. There would be a five-day refresher and training session, and a subsequent three separate sessions of a week-long course.

All total, almost an entire month at Quantico. I hung up the phone at my desk in the bullpen and turned to Mulder with a sinking feeling.

"They want you to _what_?" he exclaimed when I told him what the call was about. His mouth hung open like a shocked fish.

I made a shushing motion with my hand. "It's just temporary," I said in a low voice. "Not even a month."

He leaned over the edge of my desk towards me. "It's more scutwork," he shook his head. "First of all, you should be _autopsying_ at Quantico, not empowering a bunch of Jodie Foster wannabes."

For some reason, that made me bristle. "Teaching self-defense is not such an unworthy cause," I said, as clearly as I could. "And I don't think I mind being selected for it at all."

He snorted. "My second point. They could pick any number of female agents. Why do they need you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" My eyebrow itched to rise.

Mulder paused, sensing my mood. "It just means there are other things you could be doing."

"Like what?" I met his gaze head-on. "Like dissecting big piles of manure?"

He acted like he hadn't heard. "What if we get an X-File?" he muttered, glancing around at the other agents absorbed in their work. "You can't travel if you've got to be teaching all the time."

I shrugged, feeling annoyance spike tendrils into my temples. "Mulder, perhaps you could go a month without an X-File. Abstain. Not get yourself into hot water for once. Does that sound like a possibility?"

Now the shock on his face made him look positively sick.

I sighed. "Look, the training session starts Monday. Right now I need to talk to Kersh, make the necessary arrangements. When I come back, we'll talk. Is lunch okay?" I stood and pushed in my desk chair.

He nodded, still looking like someone had sucker-punched him. Well, I reflected as I left the bullpen, in a way that was probably true.

Kersh's secretary waved me through as soon as I walked into the waiting room. He looked up from the papers he'd been shuffling and steepled his fingers, staring at me as I stood in front of his desk. His glasses reflected the light, hiding his eyes.

"I hear you're changing locations for a month," he said in that cool metal voice. "You've taught at the Academy before, correct?"

"Yes, sir," I responded. "I was an instructor in forensic pathology before I was partnered with Agent Mulder."

"And then assigned back when the X-Files were closed the first time?"

I didn't blink. "Yes, sir."

"Perhaps you're wondering why the nature of this assignment is different, Agent Scully. I can assure you that it is not a demotion. There are opportunities to be found at Quantico for advancement, no matter what field you start in."

Not likely for me. "I realize that, sir. But I won't be staying. I'll perform my assignment to the best of my ability and return in a month's time."

"And if something better than Domestic Terrorism arises?"

I met his gaze squarely. "Such a situation hasn't presented itself yet."

"It will." He waited for me to say something else, but I kept silent. "Well, then, since you have to report to Quantico in a few days, I've gotten the paperwork ready." He paused. "I'll have to ask you to clean out your desk. It'll be used by another agent while you're gone."

I pressed my lips together for a moment. Less than a month, and he was going to let someone else use my desk?

This wasn't really just a temporary assignment, I realized.

*

Jen's Cafe  
12:17 pm

Mulder spoke around a mouthful of cheese steak. "So you're actually going to do this." He pinned me with a resentful glare.

I wiped my mouth and spread the napkin back over my lap, trying to radiate patience and understanding. "Yes, of course. I wouldn't turn down a specific request."

"Why not, if you know they're trying to lowball you?" He swallowed.

"Mulder, why do you insist this is some kind of punishment?"

"Isn't it? They're trying to take you away from me." He noticed me shaking my head and plunged on. "Reassigning your desk? It's just the beginning of the end, Scully."

I sat back in my chair and looked at him, hunched over his charred, greasy cheese steak. I did understand his perspective, paranoid as Mulder has proven to be over the years. And he was right to be suspicious. But that didn't make it any easier to reassure him. What he didn't realize was that I still had some personal choice in the matter, albeit limited.

He did need reassuring, though. I leaned forward again. "Look, Mulder, that is not going to happen. I'll be back in less than a month, back at my desk." I held his gaze, willing myself to believe the words so that he could. "And besides, it's not like I'm being assigned to some far-off field office. I mean, you're closer to Quantico than I am living in Georgetown."

He still scowled. "Mulder," I said, and reached for his wrist, closing my fingers around it.

He looked at my hand, pale against his arm, then back at me with dark eyes. He put his sandwich down and clasped my hand. His grip was warm and all of a sudden the restaurant around us didn't exist anymore. There was only Mulder, looming in my vision and my senses.

His voice was strained and low, but it was the only sound I heard. "Scully, we were close. We _were_ close." And I knew he was referring now to that dark week just before we were assigned to Kersh. When Gibson appeared in our lives once more, swathed in bloody bandages. "And one of these days, we will find what we're looking for. But we can't do it apart. We can't let them beat us." He squeezed my fingers.

Mulder's eyes were a steel grip. His face was the same as it had been for six years, if a little older and rougher, but the air between us was different than in the past. A part of me breathed it in, feeling the changes in each nerve of mine that responded to his touch. But another part of me, older and more practiced, set up the old emotional defenses. _Careful, Dana. Don't let yourself get swept away._ A litany of denial repeated like a Hail Mary.

But I couldn't help squeezing his hand back. "They won't, Mulder," I told him. "They won't beat us."

*

*

"They won't, Mulder," she told me. We sat in that little diner surrounded by a lunchtime crowd of government types -- any number of whom might have been working for the very men who had attacked us with this latest piece of subterfuge -- and again she tried to reaffirm her faith in me, in us. But even as she did I clutched her hand like a drowning man, too afraid of letting go any connection to her.

At the end of the day when she started packing her things into a cardboard box I sat there and watched. She met my eyes every time she placed something in the box, as if to tell me, "It'll be back. Don't worry."

How could I help but worry? She was going to walk out of this bullpen; impersonal as it was with all of the rushing agents and ringing phones, it had been bearable only because of her. She would get in her car and go home. Spend the weekend doing who knew what, without me, and then on Monday when I returned to this impersonal bullpen, there'd be a stranger sitting at her desk. And it would be four long, aching, empty weeks until she came back. If she came back.

I could see it happening. It would be the last week of the course, and someone would recognize her, would remember her, would realize she was Dana Scully. Would decide that her punishment as my partner had gone on long enough, six years too long. They'd take her out of that ridiculous job and put her back in a lab. Doing forensic pathology, what she was qualified for and what she would shine at. They'd probably tell her _that_ was temporary, too. At first.

And she'd be in her scrubs again, believing them, and she'd investigate the bodies to satisfy her own inquisitive nature just as much as to do the job, or uphold justice. And maybe in the middle of writing a report, she'd realize she felt a sense of accomplishment she would never get working with me on these damn unsolvable cases. Maybe even _had_ never gotten with me, if I wanted to make myself completely miserable. So that the next time I called her, anxious and hoping my anxiety wouldn't transmit over the phone, she'd say slowly, "Mulder...I've been thinking..."

And she'd take back all the promises, and leave me.

Well, hell. She _should_ leave me. For all the times I've told her she should, for all the times I've left her, she should leave me.

Right, keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day you'll actually believe it.

And maybe also, after I've absorbed the blow by some paranormal, unexplainable explosion of inner strength, I'll find it in myself to really be happy for her. To understand, deep down and not just on an intellectual level, that it's better for her. Perhaps we'd meet up again, in a year's time, and she'd be someone different. A better Dana Scully, with smiles that came quickly to her face. A heart light enough to shine from her eyes, which would then be open and soft. A year away from me could do that, I'll bet.

It would take the end of the world before Dana Scully's leaving could make me happy.

I carried the box for her to the parking garage. She unlocked her car, small body moving purposefully inside the black trench coat, and part of me wondered how she could possibly be teaching recruits twice her size how to fight. But of course I knew the real truth. She was strong, stronger than me. She didn't need brawn to show it.

She turned to take the box from me; our hands touched as she wrapped her fingers around the edges. It was a brief electric moment I tried to memorize, to save for the empty future when I knew I'd be wondering what it had felt like to touch her.

She looked up at me for a half second; our gazes crossed paths like lightning bolts meeting before she turned away. I stood there with limp arms as she put the box in the car, sat behind the wheel.

"Thanks, Mulder," she said as she closed her door. She searched my face for a moment, perhaps thinking of the right thing to say, like there _was_ anything right in a moment like this. Finally, she just shook her head. "Stay in touch." Her face swallowed all of the light in the dim cement garage.

Well, if she could act like the foundations of her existence were still secure and solid, so could I. "Sure," I said. "I'll call you." And then, because I had to tell her _something_ , "Be careful." The pathetic words left my mouth as if from miles away.

She started up the engine, ignition echoing up and down the emptying rows of parked cars. I stepped back a bit so she could drive out of the space. She lifted a hand briefly, white against the darkness of her car's interior. And then all I could see were the red taillights as she drove off.

*

2630 Hegel Place, Apt 42  
7:45 pm

My apartment was too dark when I got home. Too familiar. I watched my fish swimming in restless circles. They explored their boundaries with unrelenting ambition, nosing the clear glass and fixing me with translucent eyes. I sprinkled food on them. "I know how you feel, guys. But hey, didn't you ever think sometimes it's better to stay in the tank? Who wants to go outside exploring, anyway? The place you're already at is as good as any, right?"

Fuck that though, there was no way I could stay in my own tank tonight. I changed into running clothes, a long-sleeved T-shirt and sweat pants for the winter night, and left.

The night outside was chilly. Slush still melted on the sidewalks, and my feet crunched in the gray grit as I ran. I let my breath out in gusts of white air, watching them dissipate in the coldness. My worries, the thoughts that had chased themselves around my head all day, left with them. Scully's face floated away also, to my relief.

For over an hour there was nothing but the night and my feet pounding the wet cement. Dull heat in my legs and sides as my muscles worked to propel me away from my troubles. I hardly felt the cold anymore.

But when I finally slowed down in front of my apartment building, bending over and puffing, everything came back with shivers. I shook my head, feeling my legs start to tremble. Fatigue or fear?

Life without Scully. That was exactly what it came down to. I wanted the truth. And the truth was, without the X-Files there was only Scully, and without Scully, there was...nothing.

I stumbled into the elevator, punching the fourth floor button.

When did it happen, anyway -- this utter dependence on her? She had started out as just another stranger, after all, invading my space with her skepticism and her unflinching logic. I'd gone for such long stretches alone, on the emotional defensive against any kind of companionship, that I hadn't even recognized the change when it came. One day she was a dowdy, frumpy nuisance -- the next she permeated every facet of my existence. She'd spread and taken over, taken me by surprise until I didn't want anything else but her.

The realizations crashed like thunder in my head. God, even when I left her, when I went off alone to search for what I considered my own truths, she was still there with me. Sitting in a corner of my conscious, watching over every step I took.

Back in my apartment, I turned the shower on, stepped in without bothering to wait for the water to heat up. It pounded my shoulders like icy needles and I lifted my face, letting the drops sting my eyes and cheeks. I shivered, feeling muscles and skin contract against the temperature.

Her departure was something I knew would happen -- _should_ happen -- eventually, for her own good. But what I also knew was that I'd never actually accepted the fact. Despite all of my posturing, telling her it would be for the best, telling _myself_ that, at some core level I had recognized that it would be the worst thing for me. Recognized that I would become something dead and hollow without her. So I had pushed the idea away, refusing to confront it.

One would think, considering how often we looked death in the eye, that I could accept it would all end one day. But those times had only pushed her further under my skin, until some days it felt like I didn't even recognize myself without her. It was the idea that she could leave because of other forces than death -- her own choice, conspiracy, alien abduction -- that the phrase _'til death do us part_ didn't apply to us as I had thought it did -- _that_ was what floored me with paralyzing fear.

I _had_ tried. Last summer when she told me about her resignation, at first I could only react on a physical level, stuttering out my feelings before acting -- God, so unsuccessfully! -- on them. But later, I made the effort to understand and let her go, told her to go be a doctor.

But she came back anyway. She'd come back from the ends of the earth and the claws of death once more. So in my relief just that she was alive and disagreeing with my token objections to her return, I refused to believe the threat would ever resurface.

Now here it was again, staring me in the face. At last there could be no denying it, the realization that once she left, then and only then would I know what true loneliness was. Scully was my last chance -- after her I'd never have it so good again. She was the end of the road for me.

I fell into bed still wet and shivering, thinking I'd be too tired to dream. But all night my sleep was interrupted by images of her -- walking away, or of red taillights receding, or of Scully's figure fading in the distance.

And all I could do was stand there and watch my world disappear with her.

*

FBI Academy  
Monday, January 25, 1999  
9:04 am

We circled each other. I kept an alert eye on the tall recruit -- both of us in defensive postures -- aware of his every move. The rest of the class stood in an attentive circle around us on the exercise mat. Their faces were fresh and youthful, despite the serious expressions. Most of them, including the women, outweighed me by at least fifty pounds and had the height to prove it. I felt like a dwarf among Olympians. Nothing I wasn't used to, though.

"Remember," I called to the class. "He's trying to get me off my feet, so I'll be powerless." Perspiration dripped down my back, soaking my sports bra. The recruit's -- his name was Taylor, I reminded myself -- face was flushed and sweaty. We'd been going at it for about fifteen minutes, just blocks and parries to punches at first, but now I'd urged him to try less formal methods. Hauser-type methods.

I'd spoken to Mulder exactly twice in ten days, which worried me. It wasn't that we didn't make the effort. But Kersh had assigned a mountain of background checks once I left, and he'd been busy. We were both busy. Each night I limped out to my car to make the drive back to Georgetown, reliving my Academy days with every sore muscle. Sometimes I'd be asleep within minutes after coming through my front door.

He seemed okay, the two times we managed to talk. Teasing a bit -- _Scully, what do you say you come over and help me out? Maybe you could teach me some hand-to-hand combat?_ \-- and keeping the conversations short and light. If he needed any more reassurance than that last day together, he didn't voice it.

But even over the phone I knew everything he wasn't telling me. After six years Mulder was an open book I'd read through many times. I knew his unspoken worries, the gloss he painted over what must have been hellish hours spent in the bullpen.

Both times, listening to the silence of the phone line after he hung up, I closed my eyes because it hurt too much to look at the world. Because I could see it the way he was seeing it. Gray and empty. Incomplete.

That, in the end, was why I didn't try to contact him more often. I had thought that our physical separation would be less important than not communicating -- after all, short of our attempt last summer, we really had no physical relationship to speak of -- but I'd underestimated how much I would miss him. I missed seeing him every morning, saying goodbye at the end of every work day.

And it hurt too much to talk under the ever-present threat that one day we might be separated forever. Funny, I thought. Such a long time preventing any progress physically, thinking it would complicate things, when this separation at work wouldn't be such a big issue if we _were_ together that way.

Was that progress of any kind at all?

We circled again. I watched Taylor's eyes, knowing I'd see his move there before he could make it. To the class I called, "Don't be afraid to step away, to employ evasive maneuvers. In fact, it's more practical to avoid contact altogether. Otherwise, you lose space and advantage."

His eyes flickered. I sidestepped just as he lunged in an attempted tackle. He landed facedown on the mat with a grunt. I looked down at his body, long and sprawled -- all grace gone.

"That's exactly what I'm talking about," I nodded.

The balance of my relationship with Mulder had changed, I knew, around the time of my cancer. It had always been dynamic; neither of us could sustain one level of emotion towards the other indefinitely. But after the remission I felt that the stakes had been raised, the intensity turned up. My dance with death had made it clear that there was so much more between us left to do, and so little time left to make things happen.

And yet, I was more afraid than ever to do anything about the issue. There was the risk of losing our footing. Of becoming too dependent and then, at the inevitable end, of being the one left behind.

That dark cancer time, I suppose, was when my emotions had really started to develop a defensive posture with metal armor. I knew that he was waiting for me. Every day in his eyes I saw the questions and the longing. But I let them hit my emotional blocks and parries, refusing to openly acknowledge the changes that had occurred. I couldn't let my shields down. Otherwise one of us in the end would feel the unavoidable hurt and pain, because the truth is that nothing lasts forever. Nothing is perfect. And because of that knowledge, I would not let myself weaken.

But I also realized that the sacrifice I was making for emotional safety in the long run meant a bleak, lonely lifetime in between.

Taylor stood and faced me again. Frustration twisted his face. He made a few more lunges, this time with fists, letting out furious gusts of air each time he missed.

"You're getting angry," I said to him. "You're wasting time and energy, losing focus and not getting anything accomplished." I talked past him to the class. "Now would be a good time to go on the offensive and wrap things up."

I stepped in and to the side, just as he threw another punch, and grabbed his wrist. I braced myself, using his momentum to flip him. He landed on his back with a grunt. Quick as a cat, I rolled him over onto his other arm and knelt on his back, pinning the wrist I still held with my knee and my hand. Easy. A maneuver I'd managed to perform on Hauser after an eternity of hell in his class, by some miracle of my own tenacity. It was a technique I'd never forget.

"Now," I looked up at the class, calm as if my heart weren't drumming a warbeat in my chest, "you can make your arrest for assault on a federal agent, among other things. But at least the hard part's over."

I let Taylor up, backing away with my eyes on his face, in case he tried something else. Recruits who lost control in unarmed combat classes were more common than one would think. But he just scratched his cheek and shook his head, looking at me with a bemused expression.

"You did well," I told him. "It wasn't so bad, was it?" He grinned sheepishly and limped back to the other recruits. I looked around at them, wondering what they had learned from the demonstration. Wondering what I had.

Mulder. We had been circling for so long I didn't even know if we could stop. But I did know that for better or for worse, our lives would always have something in between to hold us to each other. All of these years of wasting time and energy, of losing focus, had shown me that no amount of defensive postures could deny the truth. It was up to me -- it _had_ been up to me for long enough -- to do something about it.

Time to go on the offensive.

*

My cell phone rang as I dressed in the locker room. I pulled my shirt back down over my head and thumbed _snd_. "Scully." I rotated my arms, feeling the muscles pull with the delicious feel of post-exercise.

"Hey, Scully, it's me. Still in one piece?"

Something in me turned over at the sound of his voice, exposing a vulnerable underbelly. I hid it under the happiness that sprung like a surprised flower -- I had not expected him to remember this was my first day teaching.

I sat on a bench with the phone pressed between ear and shoulder, pulling my socks on. "More or less. I did take a couple of beatings." I reflected on Hauser's class. We hadn't been able to lay a hand on him the first three days. "Recruits learn a lot faster now. Either that or I'm feeling older than I am."

"Everything okay?" The familiar _crack!_ of a sunflower seed sounded in the background.

"Well, I got the wind knocked out of me when one of them threw me down, but I managed to cover it up."

"Is that what it takes to get you on your back?" I could almost see the leer.

A laugh bubbled up, but I suppressed it. No such luck with a delicious shiver that ran up my spine at his words. "Well, keep in mind I gave as good as I got."

"Oooh, Scully, that's what I like to hear." I heard the smile in his voice. "So...three more weeks of getting thrown down, huh? Any regrets? Changes in health insurance policy?" Another sunflower seed cracked.

"Does the Bureau cover for chiropractors?"

His voice lowered. "You need somebody to rub your back?"

This time I did laugh, and enjoyed the shivers. "If you're lucky..." I stood and shoved my feet into my shoes.

"I think the weather forecast was raining sleeping bags tonight," he hinted.

"Sounds like an X-File. Think we should investigate?"

"You telling me you're in the mood, Scully?"

"Despite my actions to the contrary, Mulder, I'm always in the mood for an X-File," I confessed. There was silence on the other end. "Mulder?"

"Well," and suddenly his laugh sounded painful, "that's funny, because I'm only in the mood when you're here, Scully." His voice had lost its teasing note.

Sometimes it was lovely just to know a man like him existed, someone who could say all the right things (when he wanted to) and who could make me melt with just a change in tone. I tried to breathe normally. "Mulder, I'll be back before you know it."

"Scully, believe me," he enunciated, "I'll know exactly when you're back."

Was that the sound of my knees knocking? Not such a tough defensive posture anymore, huh, Dana? I sighed. "I do believe you, Mulder."

"Well, it's about time," he murmured.

It _was_ time, I realized. Time for another change in balance, time to break the circle.

I took a breath. "You know, I think I'll take you up on it. I...Mulder, I have something to tell you. Something I think you'll like," I amended quickly. _At least, I hope so._ "Is tonight okay?"

"Something I'll like?" His tone was light and teasing again, but with a darker undercurrent that made my nerves sing electricity. "Guess I've got to cancel all my hot dates. You can't tell me over the phone?"

I half-smiled, but injected all the seriousness I could in my response. "No, I... I think I'd better say this in person."

I listened to him absorb that, wondering what he would say. Would he understand? He made a strange cough sound, and then, "Hey Scully, maybe you could bring your sleeping bag in case the weather forecast's wrong."

At least we were on the same level. "Mulder, I'll see you soon."

"See you," his voice smiled.

I lifted the phone away to turn it off, part of me still feeling the conversation was unfinished somehow. I was wrong; change depended on Mulder just as much as me. I couldn't do it by myself. I just hoped we would be able to bring this, six years of circling, to a close tonight.

His voice floated out of the phone all of a sudden, faint but sharp. "Scully, wait!"

I put it back to my ear. "Mulder?"

"I just..." He stopped. I kept quiet, waiting for him. "Scully, if you really... I...." He stopped again, ghost words floating in the air. "I mean, it'll be good to see you." His words were layered with something deeper, and again those shivers ran through me.

The silence hung full between us, alive over the phone connection. I felt my hand drift up to finger the cross around my throat. The locker room seemed to breathe around me, and I took a breath with it, lowered my voice even though I wanted to shout all of my joys and frustrations to him.

"Mulder," I said. "I know." I tried to think of something else to say, to let him know I really did understand what he was trying to tell me. Because I did know. It was the same thing I wanted. And that thrilled me in places I'd denied of existence for a long time. But in the end I just said, "We'll talk tonight."

He sighed, the most beautiful sound I'd heard all day. And then, as was his habit, he disconnected without saying goodbye.

I listened to the silence on the line. Strange, nothing empty about it this time.

But I closed my eyes anyway, imagining.


End file.
